Reinventing Sprint Reviews

Are your Sprint Reviews feeling lackluster and unproductive? Do stakeholders nod off during demos of your team’s work, leaving you with little engagement or feedback? Don’t worry, we’ve been there too. But, we’ve found a solution to make Sprint Reviews more engaging and productive than ever before.

Let’s start by reminding ourselves of the definition of a Sprint Review is. In the world of Scrum, the Sprint Review is an essential event that takes place at the end of each sprint. The purpose of this review is to inspect the outcome of the sprint and determine future adaptations. The Scrum Team presents the results of their work to key stakeholders and progress toward the Product Goal is discussed. It’s a working session that should be collaborative, not just a boring presentation.

Unfortunately, we’ve all experienced Sprint Reviews that are often just another checkbox to tick off and have a tendency to turn into a snooze-fest. The work is demoed out of context as individual puzzle pieces, stakeholders nod off, and provide little feedback. But, we’ve found that with a few simple changes, Sprint Reviews can be the highlight of the Sprint.

Here’s what we did differently:

1. Send out an agenda beforehand

We found that sending out an agenda before the Sprint Review helped set expectations and ensured that everyone involved in the delivered work was present. This should include the following:

• Introduction: Clarifying the purpose of the Sprint Review
• Review of sprint goals: It is good to remind everyone what was set at the beginning of the sprint, even unachieved goals.
• Demo of work: A summary of what will be presented by the team.
• User Testing: A hands-on session where stakeholders can test the new features with specific scenarios.
• Feedback: An open forum to provide input and ask questions.

2. Give context and provide the big picture

There is often a struggle to connect the individual work packages to the overall project. To address this, we started providing more context and the big picture during the Sprint Review. This included:

• A brief overview of the project’s (not just the sprint’s) overall goals, including why the project was initiated and what the expected outcomes were.
• A summary of milestones achieved during the sprint and how they contribute to the overall project plan.
• An explanation of how the completed work contributes to the overall project goals.

3. Let the team present their own work

In the past, we had the Product Owner present the work completed during the Sprint, which often resulted in an unvarying presentation. To improve engagement, we let the team present their own work. This included:

• Asking them to choose specific work packages to present, which they prepared and practiced beforehand.
• Encouraging team members to explain the technical details of their work in a way that stakeholders could understand.
• Supporting team members in preparing the presentation to improve their delivery and engagement with stakeholders.

4. Hands-on user testing

If you want to make your product successful, you need user testing — so why not get it in as early as possible? Instead of just demoing the work, we started providing hands-on user testing sessions for stakeholders to test the new features. This included:

• Providing specific scenarios to test, based on the expected user behavior for each feature.
• Asking stakeholders to share their screens during the recording and taking notes on stakeholder feedback during the review.
• Analyzing the feedback received during the review to identify areas for improvement and using the feedback as input for further development.

Our takeaways

• Want to knock your stakeholders’ socks off? Prepare for user testing! Yes, it requires a bit more legwork to create testing scenarios and gather necessary data before the session, but trust us, the feedback you receive will make it all worthwhile. Not to mention, it will keep your team energized and excited to improve your product.
• Are you ready to inspire your team to greatness? Hand over demoing responsibilities to your team and watch their pride and motivation soar. Sure, it might require some extra support and motivation, but the payoff is worth it when you see your team members delivering their best work.
• Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to running a successful review. It’s all about finding what works best for your unique project. For example, with limited stakeholder availability, we decided to include a concept update as part of our review with optional attendance for the dev team. This allowed us to gather feedback on upcoming product backlog items without burdening our stakeholders’ already packed calendars.
• Don’t be a chronic crammer! Keep your stakeholders engaged and committed by scheduling a fixed time slot for your review. Even if not everyone can attend, having a regular cadence provides a steady beat for your project and keeps everyone on the same page.

By making these changes, we saw a significant improvement in our Sprint Reviews.

So, if you’re feeling like your Sprint Reviews could use a boost, give these changes a try. Your stakeholders (and team) will thank you for it!

This article was written for Sclable’s blog on Medium by our Agile Lead, Julia Stavrev-Kraft and Business Design Architect, Jan Hilmar. Follow us on LinkedIn to get notified of new posts or check out our website to see the work we do!

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